[lit-ideas] What's In A Name?

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2013 21:48:52 -0400 (EDT)
Names: Physicalist & Other

In a message dated 9/1/2013 7:44:56  A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes in his interesting  "The physicalist view of 
names":
There are many other issues raised by the  post ‘World 3 as a challenge to 
materialism’ – such as explaining how W2 may be  located within physical 
space-time, and in that sense within W1, without W2  being therefore merely 
physical in its content.
 
 
---
 
and then there is Grice on "Definite descriptions".
 
McEvoy uses the term 'name' rather interestingly.
 
As Grice notes, we should distinguish between 'proper names' -- like  
"Grice" -- and 'improper' (or as he preferred, _common_ names) -- oddly, as  
'grice':
 
 
-- From wiki:
 
"The grice was a type of swine found in the Highlands and Islands of  
Scotland and in Ireland.[1][2] It became extinct, surviving longest in the  
Shetland Isles, where it disappeared in the late nineteenth century. It was 
also  
known as the Highland, Hebridean or Irish pig."
 
Only AFTER elucidating what we mean (or fail to) by 'name' could we proceed 
 with misunderstandings on 'physicalist'.
 
Grice thought that people are very 'bad at names', but go by 'dossiers'. A  
dossier, in Grice's technical use, is a collection of 'definite 
descriptions'  that allocate an allegedly proper name.
 
-- Eg. 
Indexicals as Token Reflexives
filosofia.dafist.unige.it/epi/text/gar.htm‎
Traduci questa pagina
First approximation, Evans' Russell's Principle:  To grasp the singular 
state of affairs ... Grice's dossier metaphor: "Let us say  that X has a 
dossier for a definite ...
 
---
 
Grice was familiar with Donnellan's pragmatics of 'names' vs. 'definite  
descriptions' but he thought he had superseded (as he indeed did) Donnellan 
when  Grice explored the fascinating topic of those 'names' (like PEGAGUS) 
that can  become 'Vacuous' ("Grice, "Vacuous Names") but hardly 
anti-physicalist.
 
"A horse cannot fly. Yet the Greeks named "Pegasus" one such creature. This 
 is what I call an example of a vacuous name".
 
I have explored McEvoy's dealing (did I?) with Searle's Chinese room  
argument elsewhere (in my post commenting on R. Paul on Bolzano).
 
Cheers,
 
Speranza
 
 
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[lit-ideas] What's In A Name?

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